A prisoner of war (POW) is a person who is held captive by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. The earliest recorded usage of the phrase "prisoner of war" dates back to 1610.
A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured by a belligerent power in time of war.
Camp Albuquerque was an American World War II POW camp in Albuquerque, New Mexico that housed Italian and German prisoners of war. From this branch camp, the POWs did mostly farm labor, from 1943 to 1946. Most of these POWs were transferred from Camp Roswell, which was a base or main POW camp for New Mexico. Camp Lordsburg, New Mexico, and Camp El Paso, Texas, were also base camps.
Werner Drechsler was a German U-boat crewman during World War II. He served on U-118, which was sunk off the Azores in 1943. When he was taken prisoner, Drechsler, a conscript, enthusiastically cooperated with his captors. His father, a Social Democrat, had been sent to a Nazi concentration camp as a political prisoner.
Camp Bowie is a United States National Guard training center located in west-central Texas on the southern outskirts of Brownwood.
Camp Concordia was a prisoner-of-war camp that operated from 1943–1945. Its location is two miles north and one mile east of Concordia, Kansas. The camp was used primarily for German Army prisoners during World War II who were captured in battles that took place in Africa.
Internment of German resident aliens and German-American citizens occurred in the United States during the periods of World War I and World War II. During World War II, the legal basis for this detention was under Presidential Proclamation 2526, made by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act.
Wilhelm Reinhold Johannes Kunze was a German World War II prisoner of war (POW) held at Camp Tonkawa, Oklahoma. He was a Gefreiter in the Afrika Korps. Following a trial before a kangaroo court on November 4, 1943, he was beaten to death by fellow POWs based on allegations of treason and spying for the Americans. The unmasking of Kunze happened by accident; he had been in the habit of passing notes to the American doctor at the camp during sick call. These notes contained useful information regarding the activities of various POWs in the camp, some of whom were loyal Nazis. One day a new American doctor was on duty who did not know about Kunze's role as spy and who could not speak German. When Kunze handed over his note, the American doctor accidentally blew Kunze's cover by sending it back via another POW, who read the incriminating note and quickly realised that Kunze was a spy. News of this discovery spread quickly and soon afterwards Kunze was killed inside the camp by his fellow POWs. He is buried in the Fort Reno prisoner of war cemetery.
Camp Atlanta was a World War II camp for German prisoners of war (POWs) located next to Atlanta, Nebraska. Over three years, it housed nearly 3,000 prisoners. After the war, a number of soldiers and prisoners from the camp returned to live in the area.
Camp Adair was a United States Army division training facility established north of Corvallis, Oregon, operating from 1942 to 1946. During its peak period of use, the camp was home to approximately 40,000 persons — enough to have constituted the second largest city in the state of Oregon. The camp was largely scrapped as government surplus following termination of World War II, with a portion of the site reconstituted as "Adair Air Force Station" in 1957.
Camp Hulen was a military training camp near Palacios, Texas, United States that operated from 1925 until 1946, and at one time supported the largest concentration of troops for field training in the United States military.
Camp Clinton was a World War II prisoner of war facility located in Clinton, Mississippi, just off present-day McRaven Road, east of Springridge Road. Camp Clinton was home to 3,000 German and Italian POWs, most of whom had been captured in Africa and were members of the Afrika Korps.
Camp Barkeley was a large United States Army training installation during World War II. The base was located eleven miles (18 km) southwest of Abilene, Texas near what is now Dyess Air Force Base. The base was named after David B. Barkley, a Medal of Honor recipient during World War I. The camp was 70,229 acres (284.21 km2) in size and had a population of 50,000 at its peak of operation.
Camp Beaver Dam was an American World War II prisoner of war camp in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin during the summer of 1944. The camp held 300 German prisoners of war in a tent city encampment where the Wayland Academy field house now stands.
Members of the German military were interned as prisoners of war in the United States during World War I and World War II. In all, 425,000 German prisoners lived in 700 camps throughout the United States during World War II.
Large numbers of German prisoners of war were held in Britain between the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and late 1948. Their numbers reached a peak of around 400,000 in 1946, and then began to fall when repatriation began. The experiences of these prisoners differed in certain important respects from those of captured German servicemen held by other nations. The treatment of the captives, though strict, was generally humane, and fewer prisoners died in British captivity than in other countries. The British government also introduced a programme of re-education, which was intended to demonstrate to the POWs the evils of the Nazi regime, while promoting the advantages of democracy. Some 25,000 German prisoners remained in the United Kingdom voluntarily after being released from prisoner of war status.
DeWitt General Hospital was a World War II US Army Hospital in Auburn, California in Placer County at the corner of C Avenue and First Street. The hospital was built in 1944 to care for troops returning home from overseas service and troops that served on the home front. The first patient checked in on February 17, 1944. The hospital had 2,285 beds housed in single story buildings over the 284 acres campus. DeWitt General Hospital was three miles north of downtown Auburn.
During World War II, Utah held 15,000 prisoners of war. These prisoners were predominately German and Italian, and they were spread out over 12 different camps over the course of two years. Utah's terrain of mountains and desert, as well as its isolated and inland position, made it an ideal place for housing POWs. Camps in Salina, Tooele, and Ogden held the most soldiers. Camp Salina is especially notable for the massacre that occurred July 8, 1945. Prisoners provided much of the agricultural labor throughout Utah during the war, allowing them to form special bonds with the community that weren't traditionally seen elsewhere in the country.
